By: V4 Agency
Equipped with iron bars and hammers, a gang of ten youngsters beat up a 15-year-old teenager so badly that he spent more than a week in medically induced coma. An opposition politician has urged the government to take action against the growing violence, while the capital’s deputy mayor blames the city’s surveillance camera system for the surge in violent crime and incidents.
In Paris a 15-year-old teenage boy of Ukrainian descent was beaten with shocking cruelty in broad daylight by a gang from a commune near the capital. The boy named Yuriy was rushed to hospital and kept in medically induced coma for more than a week. The incident had triggered a general outcry across the country.
The circumstances of the brutal attack remain unclear, but it may have been the result of a gang war, according to information obtained by Le Figaro. Yuriy was talking to his friends after school when members of the gang, presumably from Vanves near Paris, attacked him, believing that he belonged to their rival gang. The assault was caught on camera, showing that the boy lying on the ground, unable to defend himself, is being ruthlessly thrashed. With an object resembling a hammer in hand, one of the attackers hit Yuriy in the head multiple times, fracturing his skull in several places.
Following the incident, the victim’s mother, Nataliya K. told the media that she cannot comprehend how her son, an extremely well-behaved teenager, could have become the target of such an atrocity.
According to press reports, however, Yuriy had a screwdriver on him that could have been used as a weapon, making the case even more intriguing. Authorities have launched an extensive search operation to locate the attackers who fled the scene, leaving their half-dead victim behind.
The prefecture has knowledge of 15 gangs whose members regularly commit crimes in the capital, Le Figaro writes, citing police sources. The number of crimes committed by gangs has recently dropped from 159 in 2016 to 83 in 2020, but it is more than disconcerting that 67 per cent of the perpetrators are underage and increasingly violent.
Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin has described the violence against Yuriy as “unprecedented” and promised a comprehensive investigation to apprehend and punish the perpetrators.
National Rally party chief Marine Le Pen also spoke about the incident. In a recent tweet, the politician asked whether people should get accustomed to experiencing everyday violence, adding that the government cannot turn a blind eye to such barbaric acts.
Other politicians also weighed in on, but some appear to hold quite surprising views regarding the current wave of violence. Centrist politician Nicolas Jeanneté explained in a television interview that the 15th district of Paris, where the incident took place, was no more problematic than any district in the capital. He blamed the coronavirus for the violence, saying young people have no opportunity to do any sports, which leaves them unable to relieve their accumulated tensions amidst the restrictions, and leads to violence.
However, Paris Deputy Mayor David Belliard, came up with an even more shocking explanation for the increasing violence, blaming the capital’s camera surveillance systems. In January 2020, when Mr Belliard ran as the greens’ mayoral candidate, he said the indirect cause behind the surge of violence in the capital is the fact that Paris has too many CCTV cameras.
The deputy mayor stressed that even though the city had spent millions on Paris’s surveillance system, the case of Yuriy shows that it was completely in vain.
According to an article in the weekly Valeurs actuelles, however, the footage of the attack recorded by CCTV cameras is not at all useless. To the contrary: investigators are busy analysing the video in a bid to identify and apprehend the suspects.